The Dead of Winter (18 page)

‘Carry your kit around with you, do you?' Toby again. ‘Just in case you stumble over a body? Right little girl scout.'

‘Toby, just cut it out,' Viv snapped at him. ‘Ask Melissa for some painkillers and get over yourself.'

‘I've got some pills in the kitchen,' Melissa said vaguely. ‘Do you really have your stuff with you?' she asked. ‘I mean . . . ?'

‘No, but we can improvise, don't worry,' Miriam said. ‘What we need to do is isolate anything that the local CSIs need to examine properly, so we'll do the obvious stuff like bagging and tagging keys and any trace evidence we find, photographing anything we can, that sort of thing.'

Rina glanced around the table. Miriam had them all focused on her, and the quiet, reasonable voice had them all in thrall.

‘I suggest you all get something to eat, and Mac and I will deal with the main scene. Hopefully, we'll get some back-up soon,' Miriam said.

Quiet discontented murmurs and sounds of reluctant agreement followed. Mac and Miriam then left with Melissa to deck themselves out in chefs' whites and see what equipment they could improvise.

‘Right,' Rina said. ‘We should get ourselves some drinks at least and see if this lunch is still hot enough to eat.'

‘Eat? I couldn't eat.' Rav shook his head.

Rina ignored him. She could see that the first shock was diminishing now and knew from experience that, despite protests and coyness about the propriety of gluttony, everyone would suddenly find that they were ravenous. She had just lifted the lid on the nearest dish when Mac reappeared carrying a small microwave, still in its box. He had not yet changed.

‘Melissa sent me with this,' he said.

Rina beamed at him. ‘Good thinking. Right, let's get it unpacked and plugged in.'

‘My mum's got the same one as that,' Robin announced. ‘Here, Viv and I will do it.'

‘There's a plug over there, set it on the sideboard. Right.'

Rina stood back and let Viv and Robin take over. Rav seemed at a loss, but he took plates over when Viv asked him and helped to carry dishes to the sideboard to make serving easier. Terry joined in, getting in the way and offering helpful suggestions, glad of something that would break the tension.

‘What's going on here, Rina?' Jay came over and stood beside her.

‘I don't know,' she told him. ‘Jay, did you see anything unusual when you were out this morning? Did you meet anyone?'

He thought about it. ‘No,' he said. ‘Nothing but crows and jackdaws out there this morning. I've never been in a place so quiet. I liked Edwin,' he added. ‘I'd been reading his books for years – we'd attended the same events, even – but our paths never crossed properly until now.'

‘What made you agree to participate in all this?'

He shrugged. ‘Curiosity, I guess. I've participated in more bizarre events. None where someone got themselves murdered, though. Any word from Gail and David?'

‘Not so far as I know. Did you know them before this weekend?'

‘I arrived on Thursday, first time I met anyone here – except Terry, of course.'

‘Oh?'

He laughed, ‘You have a suspicious mind, Rina Martin. I was an adviser on one of his films. We hit it off and kept in touch. I heard about his new film and I was coming here so I was the one suggested it might be useful to him.'

‘Sorry,' she said. ‘I suppose I'm feeling suspicious of just about everyone right now.'

Jay nodded. ‘Keep it up,' he said. ‘Something tells me this isn't ended by a long shot.'

SIXTEEN

‘
Excuse me, ma'am, but where are we going?' Sally asked her.

‘
Rome.' Elizabeth had made up her mind only in that second.

‘
What? In Italy?
'

‘
Yes. We have a villa there that my husband does not use. He will not care that I use it now.
'

‘
On our own, miss? I mean ma'am?
'

‘
Banks?
'

‘
Begging your pardon, Mrs Southam, but Mr Southam won't want any in the house that witnessed . . . Well, that witnessed what went on. I think it best I remain in your employ rather than be dismissed from Mr Southam's, if you take my meaning.
'

‘
Thank you, Banks,' she said. ‘I think we had better make speed before Mr Southam wakes, don't you?
'

By two in the afternoon, blizzard conditions had set in and any thoughts of leaving faded. Mac had set up shop in Melissa's office and begun taking statements, though as he said to Rina it was a bit of a pointless exercise in some ways: he could hardly isolate everyone from one another, and he couldn't tell them not to discuss something that was bound to be the main topic of conversation.

Miriam had finished with the kitchen and had continued upstairs. To everyone's surprise, Joy had asked if she needed an extra pair of hands, and Miriam had agreed.

‘Mac has to do other things,' Joy said. ‘I'm not worried about dead bodies, and I know how hard it is to collate and collect at the same time.' So Joy, decked out in fresh whites and with her long hair bundled into a net, had accompanied Miriam up the stairs to Edwin's room.

Rina took Tim aside, and together they went back to the seance room. The fire in the big hall had been lit, but everyone had elected to settle in the small room next to the dining room where they'd had drinks on that first night. It was comfortable and warm, and Jay had drawn the curtains and shut out the blizzard. Despite the fire in the massive fireplace, the big hall was chilly.

‘I hope Gail and Prof Franklin are holed up somewhere warm and not still out in this,' Tim said.

‘I'm surprised they didn't come back. If both roads out of here are blocked, where have they got to?'

‘Mac got through, and they left about the same time as he did. I suppose it depends which way they went. I don't really understand why they left so urgently,' Tim said.

‘No, neither do I, but there's not much we can do about it.'

The snow was creeping in under the French windows in the orangery. Rina made a point of finding the door she now knew led from there into the kitchen area and the other wing, opening it to find a small lobby and short passage through which she could see the kitchen. The library was also chilly; the fire was not lit in there, and the cold that filled the glorified conservatory penetrated the book-lined room, despite its heavy door. It seemed like a silly place for a library, Rina thought. The damp would do the books no good at all. The unheated seance room was freezing; the shutters Rina had opened earlier that day were still locked back, allowing the chill of falling snow to bleed in through the badly fitting glass and leach what little warmth there might have been.

Tim shivered. ‘Who opened the shutters?'

‘I did,' Rina told him. ‘I came in here first thing.'

‘Find anything I missed?'

‘Not so far. Tim, I felt a draft on the back of my neck several times during the seance last night.' Only last night; it felt so much longer ago. ‘Did the door open at all?'

‘No, we'd have seen it. It would have been caught on film.'

Together they examined the room again, tapping on the panelling, scrutinizing the floor. There was no electric light in the old study, and already, though it was not even mid afternoon, it was getting hard to see, the swirling snow blocking out the daylight and turning everything to shades of twilight.

‘I felt the table move,' Rina asserted. ‘We all did.'

‘And you can see it move on the video. We both know that can be made to happen in all kinds of ways.'

‘But you found no evidence of any of them?'

‘No, but that doesn't mean anything. We examined the room on Friday, but it was then left unattended for more than a day. It was locked, but frankly, that doesn't mean a damn thing, the lock is easy enough.'

He knelt beside the table. Then stood again. ‘Help me with this, will you?'

The pedestal table was of a type that Rina understood was a tea table. The beautifully figured top was designed to swing upright, and the table could then be set back against a wall when not in use. It was solid and heavy, and she admired the flame veneer, stroking the smooth surface.

‘Did Melissa polish this?' she asked.

‘No idea. Why? What are you looking for? If the shutters were closed, there'd have been no fading, surely.'

‘No, but there's no heating either. I'd have expected at least a bit of warping, some lifting of the veneer. I don't know. It's in lovely condition for something neglected for well over a hundred years.'

‘True. OK, now tip the top back, right. Ah, now that's new.'

‘What?'

‘This, look.' What had looked like a perfectly flat rest at the top of the pedestal had been slightly modified. A small piece of wadding was slipped between the tabletop and the pedestal base; when they removed it and dropped the tabletop back down, they could tilt the table, just a little. ‘Well, I'll be. So bloody simple.'

‘I thought you examined the table?' Rina said. ‘You were under it when we came into the room for the first time.'

‘I was checking for microphones, hidden whatsits. Oh, I don't know. I understood the table had already been examined, and anyway—'

‘You thought if there was going to be trickery, it would be clever trickery.'

‘So bloody simple.'

‘Hmm.' Rina recalled her conversation with Rav. Experimentally, she tested the ability to rap the tabletop. It wasn't easy, but a few practice tries convinced her that it could be done. ‘And who would be in the best position to manipulate this?' she asked.

Tim stood back, visualizing the people sitting around the table. ‘It would have been Edwin,' he said. ‘In the dark, in that kind of atmosphere, well, no one's faculties are completely switched on. It must have been Edwin. None of us saw it.'

‘But he had both hands on the table,' Rina argued, playing devil's advocate.

‘True, but—' Tim grabbed the chair Edwin had used and sat down. ‘Ah.' He tipped back slightly. ‘The legs have been shaved off at the back, look, tilts.' He slid himself beneath the table and laid his hands on the top, as Edwin had the previous night. He tipped the chair and lifted his knee. The tabletop tilted and cracked down with a solid thump. ‘Not easy,' Tim said. ‘But eminently possible, and he was here right over Christmas so he'd have had plenty of time to practice.'

‘Why would he do that?' Rina wondered. ‘And anyway, Tim, we don't know for sure it was Edwin. Three of those chairs look identical. The room has been unlocked since last night, so it would have been easy for anyone to have swapped the chairs round.'

‘True. But . . .'

Rina nodded. ‘So who else realized?'

Mac had been on the phone to the local police again. ‘More power lines down, accidents all over the place. I've told them we can hold the fort here, and they're going to try and get someone to us in a couple of hours.'

Miriam and Joy came down with a plastic box filled with freezer bags and camera equipment. ‘I need to download the images on to a computer,' Miriam said. ‘Then we can send them if the Internet connection is still OK.'

‘Seems to be,' Melissa said. She seemed very subdued. ‘I hate the thought of him just lying there. It doesn't seem right.'

‘We've turned off the heating in his room,' Miriam said. ‘That should slow decomp. I used the meat thermometer to take body temp readings so you might not want it back.'